Rob Hof of BusinessWeek brings the lens of mainstream media to display ad exchanges in his article, “Google’s Grab for the Display Ad Market.” As the title partially suggests, Google’s display ad business and industry perceptions about upcoming updates to its exchange strategies are the focus.
In the article, industry pundits have a decidedly negative view on whether or not Google can pull off a significant move in display. The view from here is that they need to launch/update their product, but that it’s within their grasp. Lack of speed will kill, though.
Hof’s crisp prose results in an easy-to-understand narrative on display challenges faced by Big G. The article omits any mention of the opportunity ahead with real-time bidding (RTB) and demand-side optimization – which could be the proverbial “game changer” for Google. RTB remains a story yet to be told as companies are just beginning to offer this feature and empirical evidence of performance improvements are few and far between.
The article ends with Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder and president of technology saying, “Display is going to be a large business for us. It’s not just an experiment.” The industry appears to be saying, “Prove it.”
In other news…
ClickZ’s Douglas Quenqua reports on TNS findings about Q1 spending in display – it’s up!
Christopher Hosford of BtoB Magazine reports from the NYC Advertising 2.0 conference this week where Barry Diller said among other prognostication that “contextual sponsorships specific for the audience” will be necessary to overcome what he believes is blindness to standard IAB banner sizes.
Brand Republic notes the use of eye tracking software which determined display ad placements in Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing performed better than Google. “Nearly half of Bing users read through the display ads on the right hand side of the search results, compared to a quarter of Google users.” As long as it isn’t due to poor search engine results in Bing, the research may show a step in the right direction for the Redmond monolith.
Finally, Joe Mandese writes that Nielsen Online is having trouble counting in MediaPost.
